


Night and Day

by jouissant



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 14:52:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8849248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant
Summary: Dick and Nix go their separate ways before the war. They meet again in Paris.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rabidchild67](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/gifts), [realiste](https://archiveofourown.org/users/realiste/gifts).



> RC asked for an AU based on "Night and Day" by Cole Porter, and then Suitcasefullofmixtapes was like, "maybe they serve in different units and meet on a pass somewhere" and then this happened.

_Night and day, why is it so_  
_That this longing for you follows wherever I go?_  
_In the roaring traffic’s boom_  
_In the silence of my lonely room_

**New Jersey, 1941**

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Dick moaned against Lew’s throat.

“Jesus Christ, why?”  

“You know why,” Dick said.

“You’ve got your hand down my trousers,” Lew said. “I might need reminding.”

They were on the floor of Lew’s walk-in closet. All around them hung Lew’s clothes, wool and silk and cashmere, fine clothes the like of which Dick would be pleased to find secondhand in a year or two or three. They’d be like new when Lew threw them out; if they were Dick’s they’d be mended over and over again until they were threadbare. In a moment, when he had Lew pressed against the soft carpet and he began to cry out, Dick would be grateful for their cottony silence, the way they’d mop up all Lew’s noise like bread did gravy. For now they only made him angry.

“Your father,” Dick said, teeth clenched, “would have me arrested.”

“My father doesn’t care what I do,” Lew said.

He slipped his hand down over Dick’s where it wrapped around his cock. He made as if to twine their fingers together, to soothe Dick that way, but Dick didn’t miss the way he squeezed too, as though he couldn’t help but consider his own pleasure first.

“He might care if he knew it was his junior foreman bending you over in his own house while he was downstairs having a cocktail,” Dick said.

The words felt strange in his mouth, tasted too bitter. Talking to Lew this way made his heart throb. He felt like a fox in a trap, hissing, snapping, afraid, though he couldn’t seem to gentle long enough to admit to it.

“Dick, he doesn’t even know who you are.”

Dick made to sit up, stung, but Lew reached up and palmed his cheek.

“Look at me,” he went on. “That’s not a slight, it’s just a fact, and it’s in our favor. And I don’t want him to know you,” Lew said. “I want you just for me.”

He leaned up and let his eyes fall closed. He wanted to be kissed, and Dick–God help him–wanted nothing more than to oblige. He set his thin lips to Lew’s and thought as always how plush they were, how representative, how they bloomed pink when Dick kissed them like Lew’s cheeks did in the cold.

Lew’s mouth was the first thing Dick noticed about him, eighteen months ago now: those lips, pursed around a cigarette, dark wool collar turned up against his pale face. There had been a smear of blood on Lew’s jawline where he’d nicked himself shaving and Dick had wanted so badly to lick his thumb and wipe Lew clean.

“What about Kathy?” he asked.

He could hear Lew in his head already, _C’mon, Dick, leave off,_ but tonight Dick felt a little mad, felt like prodding at a bruise the way Lew did. He did it so often, Dick thought. It must have something to recommend it.

“Forget Kathy,” Lew said. “Dick, please–”

“You’re getting married,” Dick whispered. He was still touching Lew, still squeezing him through his briefs. Now he closed his teeth around Lew’s plump earlobe, breathed into the shell of his ear the way he knew would make Lew shudder.

Dick ought to be ashamed.

Long ago he’d squared his appetites with God, had done so on the understanding that when he lay with men he did so with what he knew to be a pure heart. To tease Lew the way he did now, to make love to him with a seed of bitterness blooming inside him—it was all wrong, and it was this he felt sure would damn him in the end if he didn’t put a stop to it.

He scrambled up quickly, as though burned. The legs of a Savile Row suit hung about his shoulders. If not for the low light he was sure he’d look utterly ridiculous. He felt it, to be sure.

“Dick, c’mere,” Lew said, holding out a hand. “Don’t–”

“I’m leaving,” Dick said.

_“What?”_

“I’m quitting,” Dick said. “I’m going to join the Army.”

Lew cursed. He sat up, tucking himself back into his fly. “Jesus Christ, Dick,” he said. “You read the papers, by any chance?”

“You’re the one who said we won’t get into it.”

“Even so, why tempt fate?”

Dick shrugged. “If it happens I want some choice in the matter.”

“You’ve got a choice,” Lew said. “Stay here with me. If it happens—which it won’t—we’ll figure it out. Stanhope will—”

“What, get us out of it? Lew, I’d go. Of course I’d go.”

“Hell, did I say I wouldn’t?”

“I just thought—”

“That I’d be too yellow? Fuck you.”

“Nix—”

“Fuck you, and fuck Kathy, and fuck my father. I—I love you,” Lew said.

“What?”

“You heard me,” Lew said.

Dick felt something catch him about the throat. “Me too,” he said. “I love you, too.”

Lew grinned. Even in the dark Dick could see it, that big smile he had. Like a scythe, and Dick’s heart a ready harvest.

Lew sighed and reached for Dick, took him by the hands. “I’d marry you if we could,” he said. “I don’t love her. You know that.”

Dick looked down at their fingers, knit together. He felt as though their hands were made of driftwood. He nodded. “I’ll go anyway,” he said. “Nothing good can come of staying, and I think you know _that_.”

“Go where?” Lew asked, and Dick tried not to feel broken up about the way he didn’t argue.

“Home, I guess. Work for Edison again, if they’ll have me.”

“Edison,” said Lew. “Bunch of goddamn poachers.” He sniffed. “Don’t join up,” he said, squeezing Dick’s hands. “Wait for me. Please. If it happens, I want to go with you.”

“There’s no guarantee that—”

“I know,” said Lew. “Wait anyway.”

Dick closed his eyes. He could feel Lew before him in the swimming darkness. He reached out and hooked his finger in the collar of Dick’s shirt. In a moment Lew would pull him forward and they would kiss again. Dick waited.

**Paris, 1944**

Dick considered himself a relatively patient man, but as his cup of coffee sloshed onto the tablecloth for the third time in a quarter of an hour he decided that if the infantrymen behind him didn't stop their jostling he'd have something to say about it. 

"The Airborne," one of them was saying, loud enough that Dick couldn't be faulted for eavesdropping. "The Airborne, now they're really something. My friend's in the Airborne and he says—" 

The chair behind him collided with Dick's again, setting the flatware clinking. His cup nearly upended, soaking the corner of the letter he'd been writing. "Dammit," Dick muttered, snatching the letter and springing to his feet quickly enough to deal the neighboring table a blow of their own. He tried and failed to feel bad about it. 

"Hey!" cried one of the men, and Dick turned to glower at him. He brandished the sodden letter, and the men looked suitably abashed. 

"Aw, sorry, mac," said another. "These tables are real close." 

Too close, Dick thought. He felt edgy enough as it was. He sighed, gathered his letter and plunked enough coins on the table to cover the bill. Then he adjusted his cap, folded the letter and tucked it safely in his jacket pocket. He quit the café without a word to the boisterous soldiers behind him, hoping his hasty departure was reprimand enough. He doubted it would be—they were on a pass, after all, just like he was. He had the feeling they were meant to have the right of it, loud and jubilant, minds swimming with thoughts of liquor and good food and girls— all the sorts of things Dick guessed were supposed to comprise a good time. 

He fiddled with his collar as he crossed the street. The weather was fine if blustery. On the way into the city it had blown with rain, but now the sky had opened out, the bracing air fracturing the cloud cover to reveal patches of bright blue. Around him the city was picking itself up and stitching itself back together; there were places you could forget all about the war if you let your eyes skim over the olive drab. Dick's legs ached for walking. He thought he'd follow these streets as far as they could, turn around and come back. Keep his head clear and empty. He wondered if it was sunny in Mourmelon, and if Harry had gone to Reims to see Marlene Dietrich after all. 

"Winters?" 

He kept walking at first. Maybe he hadn't quite heard his name, or maybe, without the imperative of an attached rank he felt unobligated to answer. Clear, he thought again. And empty. 

"Dick?" 

He looked up. Lew was dodging a jeep as he jogged across the thoroughfare, its driver cursing out the window like a braying dog. He didn't give it a second look. 

Dick let himself be shocked into levity. "Haven't seen you hustle like that since the first week at Fort Benning," he called. 

"Oh my God," Lew said. "It really is you." 

He crossed the distance between them and fairly collided with Dick, arms around him, face too close for the street, hand on the back of Dick's head messing his hair up and skewing his cap. "Shit," Lew said. "Shit." He let one arm drop, dragging Dick against him sideways, knocking their heads together. He smelled clean, Dick thought. He smelled like tobacco and whiskey. 

"What're you doing here, Nix?" Dick asked, when he had breath to speak again. 

"I'm stationed here," Lew said. "What are you doing here?" 

"Forty-eight hour pass." 

"God, tell me you're not on hour forty-seven." 

Dick shook his head. "I just got in this morning." 

Lew laughed, the sound raucous and violent as his embrace had been. He tore his own hat off and threw it up overhead, letting out a whoop loud enough to startle a milling flock of pigeons. 

***

Lew steered him by the elbow, and as Dick's pulse threw itself wildly against his ribs he thought they might be anywhere, back in New Jersey or on the streets of New York. Lew was characteristically scruffy, though his uniform was clean and pressed. He'd been at ease here the way Dick was beginning to get used to in Mourmelon, and he'd gotten a little softer than Dick remembered. At Benning, by the end, he'd been almost chiseled, but it took a real pounding to get that look to stick on Lewis Nixon, and he wasn't getting it in the Intelligence Service.

"Don't do a lot of drilling here, do you, Lew? Running up hills? Marching for distance?" He let himself step close and sling an arm around Lew's waist, just for a moment. To anyone looking they'd be a couple of drunk officers, nothing more, and anyway the street they'd turned onto was narrow and deserted.

"Oh, I pound the pavement," Lew said. "But I eat well after, sure. It's Paris." He gestured around him, twirled and faced Dick walking backwards for a minute. 

"There's a war on." 

"You'd be surprised what they've got tucked away," Lew said. "Why, just the other week we ferreted out a Vichy colluder and relieved him of his wine cellar. There was some damn fine stuff in there, too. I think he was more broken up about the Châteauneuf-du-Pape than the arrest, if you want to know the truth. But them's the breaks. To the victors, et cetera, et cetera." 

"We haven't won anything yet," Dick said. Lew's tone soured him. He took a deep breath with his mouth open and they walked on in silence, Dick letting the pace wind up til Lew got the picture. 

"I didn't mean it like we had," Lew said, sounding chastened. "Look, I'm sorry. I've—it hasn't all been like Paris. And I'm happy to see you. Feels like winning, somehow." 

Dick stopped and let Lew come alongside him. He turned to look at him. There were dark circles under Lew's eyes, and though his expression was relaxed now Dick could see that the repose didn't exactly sit well on Lew's features, as though any minute they might make some mercurial shift towards dogged, maybe, or haunted. 

"Yeah," Dick said. "It does feel like winning." For the first time he let himself look at Lew's lips, felt himself tilt forward—and a woman turned the corner onto the street, pushing a baby carriage. Lew made a face and took hold of Dick's arm again. 

"Come on," he said. "I want to show you something." 

Lew's something turned out to be a movie theatre, abandoned, half destroyed by fire. 

"What happened?" Dick asked, looking up at the blank and singed marquee. 

"I don't know," Lew said. "I found it one night. We thought somebody might be hiding out here, but it was clear. I always wanted to come back and see it in the daytime." 

"Is it safe, do you think?" Dick asked. 

Lew shrugged. "Hasn't fallen down yet," he said. "Besides, don't you jump out of airplanes for a living?" 

Inside they could see the place had once been very grand; the walls were papered in a rich brocade, the boxes on the mezzanine gilded, the seats upholstered in red velvet. There was a great gash in the ceiling where the fire had eaten through, but the westerly corner of the building was intact, and they walked up the sidemost aisle and sat looking down at the gutted stage. A bird fluttered in through the hole in the roof, a stray fall of water running in after it that glowed molten in the sunlight. 

They sat very close together. They didn't touch at first. Dick felt abruptly shy, and Lew did too, from the way he held himself. Across the cavernous space Dick could hear small sounds begin to start up, the crinkle and chew of the rats and insects that came and went now in this shell of a place, forsaken by its human occupants save the two of them come back to look as thieves steal back to the scene of a crime. He'd seen so many places like this since Normandy. He used to try and picture them as they'd been, restaurants and houses and churches, the quotidian bustle of them. He didn't any more. 

At last Dick exhaled, and set his hand on Lew's knee. 

Lew let out a held breath of his own. "I was waiting for you," he said. "I didn't know if—" 

"Shh," Dick said. He reached out, took Lew's cap off and ran his fingers through Lew's messy hair. Never could keep it quite short enough, could you, Dick thought. Back home it was always in your eyes.

Now Lew's eyes were closed. He was breathing unevenly, as though he was waiting. Dick leaned in and kissed him, and when he did it was as though a spring had come uncoiled. There was little that was slow or easy about it, and they ended up half in one another's laps, their bodies too big and the theatre seats too small. Lew fastened his mouth to Dick's neck, sucked Dick's flesh between his teeth and worried at it til Dick squirmed and cursed. 

"Jesus," Lew said, pulling away. He was flushed, and he shifted in his seat and spread his legs so Dick could see that he was hard. He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Remember the first time I took you to the movies?" 

Dick swallowed. "We went to the Astor, in Times Square. We saw—I think it had Cary Grant in it." 

"I don't even remember the picture," Lew said. "All I could think about was taking you up to the balcony to neck. I had to settle for feeling up your hand in the popcorn bucket."

Dick laughed. He took Lew's hand in one of his and let the fingers of the other play over his knuckles. "Well," he said, making a show of looking around. "Here we are." 

"This isn't the balcony," Lew said. "And besides, what I want to do with you needs a bed." 

They went to Lew's. 

"You staying at the Red Cross?" Lew asked him. "Hell, I can do you one better."

One better was a townhouse in the 8th arrondissement, where Lew commanded an entire floor. "You know, I'd say you'd come up in the world," said Dick at the top of the stairs, "But that wouldn't actually be true." 

"I'd rather be here than on the floor of my closet." 

"That's a point," said Dick. 

He cast an eye over Lew's grand billet. There was the aforementioned bed, a rosewood four-poster littered with files and a dog-eared, marked up map of Europe. Dick sat on the edge of the mattress and took up the map, setting his fingernail against a penned-in star off the Norman coast. He found its mate at Carentan, a triplet at Eindhoven, another at Nuenen, another still in the mud at Mourmelon and a dotted line strung up between them Dick fancied he could feel right now, tugging at his navel. 

"You—you need another one for Paris," Dick said, looking up. His mouth was dry. Lew stood in the middle of the room and watched him, flask in hand. Where it had materialized from, Dick didn't know.

"Lew?" Dick asked. 

Lew took a long drink. He coughed. "Let's get all this shit off the bed." 

In the bed with their clothes off they were shy again. They stayed under the sheets and eyed each other. At last Lew reached for Dick and ran his hand the length of his arm, then along his collarbone, his chest, back down his his flank. 

"You ever get hurt?" Lew asked. 

Dick shrugged. "Just my ankle," he said. "A ricochet." 

"Can I see?" 

Dick slid his leg from beneath the sheets, fighting the impulse to bare the limb only. Lew hunched over his foot and ran his fingers up and down and around Dick's shin before he found the thickened, silvery scar. 

"Does it bother you?" Lew was rubbing the spot with his thumb as though he meant to ease some pain. 

"Sometimes," Dick said. "When I get old I guess I'll able to tell when the weather's changing." 

Lew made a choked noise Dick couldn't interpret. He bent and kissed the scar, and like Dick's kiss in the wrecked theatre this too seemed to break a spell, or to cast one. Lew kissed his way up Dick's body, found his mouth again and sucked on Dick's tongue the way Dick liked, the way he was a fool for, as if to prove that he remembered. 

"I want you," he whispered to Dick, who could only moan about it.

By the time Dick had Lew pressed back against the pillows, his throat was tight with pleasure. He stayed still, waiting for Lew, who was gasping as though he'd just leapt into a cold pool. When they began to move together they were as light and jerky as hummingbirds, Lew's hands hovering over the small of Dick's back. 

"Do you remember the last time we did this?" Dick asked. 

"Sure I do," Lew said, voice level as he could make it. "We were in that fleabag hotel in Georgia the night before I left, and you were sore as hell." 

"I was worried," Dick said. 

"Yeah, bullshit." 

Dick sighed. "I wanted you with me," he said. "That was all."

"I know," Lew said. "I wanted it too. But we didn't get what we wanted, did we." 

Dick shook his head. 

"I was glad you were angry," Lew said. "You—you were rough. You never used to be rough with me." 

"No?" 

"No. But it was good then. It suited the occasion."

Back then, he'd felt so often with Lew that he would fly apart given the least provocation. Not in violence, but in simple unrestrained entropy, as though he might scatter, blown about like the rusty Georgia dirt packed in the tread of his bootsoles when he left the hotel, left Lew sweaty and sleeping just shy of reveille. Lew had a week furlough to New York to see his wife and baby, then a train ride west to an undisclosed location. Dick had orders to report to a place called Camp Toccoa, where he would learn how to fall upon the enemy like a thunderbolt, the Army's vengeful angel in jump boots and bloused pants. 

He supposed he had been angry that last time. He'd wanted Lew with him, after all. 

Now Dick drove into him, wondering if this met expectations. Rough. He hooked his hand under Lew's knee, got one leg over his shoulder, and Lew cried out to feel Dick slip in deeper. Lew flexed his calf against Dick's shoulder. There was a part of Dick made wild by him every time, and it stirred now. When I have you, he thought, when I really have you, it'll be like I crawled inside. 

But— "I'm not angry," he said. "Not today." 

"Good," said Lew. "Neither am I."


End file.
